A new report finds chronic understaffing plagues hospitals across New York, something unionized nurses have been claiming for years.

The Fiscal Policy Institute released a report called “Upstate New York’s Hospital Staffing Crisis,” which states about 90% of shifts in upstate hospitals are understaffed by nursing professionals.

The report finds chronic understaffing undermines patient care, which increases the risk for patient mortality by 14%.

Registered Nurse Margaret Franks works at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie. “We have a lot of corporations that are running our hospitals right now, and their number one interest is the bottom line, and they’re quite willing to put patients over profits,” said Franks.

In August, the New York State Nurses Association union contract with Albany Medical Center expired. The union and the hospital have remained at odds over staffing as negotiations for a new contract have dragged on.

Labor and delivery nurse Jennifer Kiehle is a NYSNA member at Albany Med: “We want safe staffing ratios, wages and benefits that keep talented nurses at the bedside. And we want a voice in patient care,” Kiehle said.

FPI report author Emily Eisner says most upstate hospital staff believe their employers have not taken adequate measures to fix the understaffing crisis.

“90% of hospital shifts are understaffed,” Eisner said. “84% of the hospital ships are understaffed in terms of the RNs, the nurses in the staff and and over 90% are understaffed in terms of the ancillary or support staff who are also providing direct care to patients, and this is a major issue for the staff themselves, and also for New Yorkers in need of care. Other research, previous research, shows that mortality risk rises by 7% with every additional one patient per nurse in a hospital floor, and so when we see understaffing in hospitals, this is affecting the care that New Yorkers are receiving in the hospitals, and it increases mortality risk significantly.”

Franks says NYSNA recently released its own report on “Safe Staffing.” Franks says from January 1st to October 31st this year, surveyed hospitals failed to staff ICU and critical care patients at the 1:2 nurse-to-patient ratio mandated by state law more than 50% of the time.

“When you have eight nurses on a high acuity floor, that leaves you seven and a half minutes per hour to deliver all the care you need to for that patient,” Franks said. “It’s impossible to charge on them, to medicate them, to care for them, to bring them to the bathroom, to make sure that their needs are met, to advocate for their needs to the doctors. To follow any orders that are put in, because orders are coming in around the clock, they do not stop. And that gives you an idea of the struggle that nurses are against. It also causes a lot of moral distress for nurses, because we are not able to physically or emotionally take care of these patients the way that we know we are trained to do.”

The FPI report says solving the crisis statewide will require a staffing increase of about 5,000 Registered Nurses and about 20,000 ancillary staff. It finds that there are 70,000 trained RNs, representing more than 35% of all trained RNs in the state who are not presently working as nurses, who could be recruited into nursing roles if adequate incentives were offered.

Eisner said “One of the key takeaways of the report was that we see this as a workforce crisis that needs to be addressed in terms of improving the quality of the jobs. One of the reasons why it’s so hard to retain the workforce is because it’s like a negative cycle when there’s chronic understaffing, the job is really stressful. It creates burnout. It creates what’s called moral injury, where care staff don’t feel like they can appropriately perform their job, and don’t feel like they can like efficiently and effectively provide care for patients, and that then makes it harder to retain staff.”

Albany Med President and CEO Dr. Dennis McKenna says the hospital is actively working to address staffing concerns. Speaking at a press conference earlier this month in Albany, McKenna dismissed NYSNA’s claims that the hospital is not being proactive.

“It’s a sound bite for NYSNA to say staffing,” said McKenna. “And I say the way we work on this together is recruit more nurses and hold on to them. And even without the acceptance of this contract, I can tell you, the numbers suggest that we have hired 250 nurses or more this year. Our turnover is going down. Our retention is going up.”

In response to a WAMC request for comment on the FPI report,an Albany Med spokesperson said, “Our staffing levels safely meet state standards. As the referral center for the region, we must be ready to serve our patients with the most specialized care at all times. Recruitment and retention are top priorities for us, and to that end, we’ve invested significantly in salaries, benefits, and wellness efforts to underscore our commitment to all our colleagues.”